1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to enterprise portfolio management and, more particularly, to the development of a set of recommendations in the form of a transition plan for the transition of the enterprise portfolio computer and software resources during each phase of the planning horizon.
2. Background Description
Managing a portfolio of computer and software resources in a sufficiently large business enterprise is a complicated and daunting task involving an analysis of a myriad of factors to include business capabilities, business value and business risk. Such factors are often both competing and interlocked which makes it especially difficult to identify an optimal portfolio transformation/evolution plan over a given time duration. Portfolio transformation recommendations may be based on: business value and cost; adherence to functional requirements of the enterprise architecture; business risks; computer and software resources life cycles; and, interoperability and incompatibility amongst the portfolio computer and software resources. This effort is traditionally performed as a manual evaluation 901 as shown in FIG. 9. The business factors 911 which must be considered in order to develop a comprehensive enterprise portfolio transition plan 912 include but are not limited to the business values, business risks, enterprise architecture strategic objectives, and co-dependencies and interoperability between portfolio members. This manual evaluation 901 can become an impossible task as the numbers of portfolio members grows. Thus, the invention provides an automated evaluation 902 for developing and optimizing an enterprise portfolio of computer and software resources transition plan 912.
Presently, no deterministic techniques exist for automation of enterprise portfolio transition management. Investment decisions into computer and software resources are currently not treated as formally as other business investments. This lack of formalism may lead to excess investment and computer and software resources that do not support the business objectives or insufficient investment in computer and software resources, resulting in loss of business competitiveness.